Cartoons and Emergency Rooms
by The Cry-Wank Kid
Summary: Present-day living AU. Tate struggles as his girlfriend Violet's Cystic Fibrosis progresses. His older brother, Jimmy, does his best to be there for him as well as take care of the rest of the family. Started as a one-shot, now extended into a longer story.
1. Chapel

**A/N: This came to me out of nowhere and I had to write it. But I really like this AU! Maybe I'll write more in it if anyone else likes it.**

**Needless to say it's totally separate from any other Muder House or Freak Show fics I've written.**

* * *

When malnutrition made Violet's hair thin, she cried. The silken dark-blonde strands had been her pride and joy for most of her sixteen years. But Tate thinks that her new cut-a blunt bob chopped just at the chin, with French-girl bangs and dyed dark brown-makes her look like a model. Her pale face is sweeter than ever.

Tonight in the respiratory ward, floor eleven, he runs his long fingers through it. He reads her Harry Potter and brings her volumes of His Dark Materials and Chronicles of Narnia. He finds Yo Gabba Gabba reruns on the previously untouched television and crawls into the tiny railed bed with her, holding her close. Violet laughs, saying that her hospital gown makes her feel like she's always about to flash him. Tate leafs through the cafeteria menu and orders her some fruit, saying she really should eat something.

But then suddenly she's coughing, she's wheezing, and he doesn't know what to do. A second ago she was all his, warm and safe and watching Jack Black sing silly songs with monsters, and now suddenly she's turning white and struggling to breath.

"Tate," she gasps, a fear in her eyes that horrifies him, "Tate... call the nurse..."

He doesn't need to. In an instant a team of strangers, in lab coats and scrubs, storms the room, codes being shouted and machines beeping frantic. He holds onto her until they physically wrench her from him arms. He sees somebody place an oxygen mask over her face and throw her on a gurney.

Then she's gone.

* * *

Down around the corner of the winding hallway, he's surprised to see Jimmy. He glances down at his older brother's fused, cleft hands and thinks yet again how ironic it is: He has a worse time fitting in than a guy with an actual _deformity. _

Quite the contrary: Jimmy Darling, before graduating six years ago, was one of the most popular guys at Westfield High. His easy, friendly manner and sweet, charismatic smile overshadowed anything about his ectrodactyly. They look alike-in the face, anyhow. Tate has that smile, too, if he'd ever bother to show it to anyone.

Jimmy eyes Tate, having just seen the commotion in the hall. "Is everything okay?" he asks carefully. Tate looks awfully pale and shaken now, as if he's seen phantoms or war.

Tate fumbles, the words that are his friends so readily in books failing him now in his own mouth. "I don't... I mean she just... They just... She..." He looks into Jimmy's face, the kindness in his dark eyes making tears come to Tate's matching ones. His voice is small and broken. "...She's really sick, Jimmy."

"Okay," Jimmy says, kindly and firmly at once. "Here, come on." He opens the door to the hospital chapel they happen to be standing by and pulls Tate inside, shutting it behind them.

It's two thirty-five in the morning. The small, deserted chapel glows eerily dark, lit only by the plastic candles lining the aisles and hung up, candelabra-style, on the walls. They look like the old 1970's ones that their mom, Ethel, puts up at Christmas. In their retro orange-creamsicle glow, watched by Jesus, Tate does an odd thing.

He goes to Jimmy. Just goes to him in a way that he hasn't in years, willing and wordless into his arms. Jimmy is only two inches taller now and doesn't quite tower over him the way he used to, but Tate hunches, crumpling enough to hide his face in his brother's chest. Jimmy is strong-not exactly muscular, but filled out in a way that Tate is yet to be. All it takes is the quick response of those strong arms around him, pulling him even closer, and he's done for. He's sobbing.

Jimmy just holds him. He doesn't care how long Tate needs to cry for, how long he's left standing in one spot or how wet his shirt gets. His silence and his steady, tight embrace say it all. Jimmy is his rock, just like he always is for the family. In seventeen years, Tate has seen him cry exactly once: Last year, when their special brother, Beauregard, died from the breathing issues caused by his facial deformity. It terrified him.

He thinks about that now and wonders if maybe he's reliving that: watching Violet struggle to breath the way Beau did, watching a second person he loves dearly suffer and wishing he could take their place. Maybe that's why he's crying so hard now that he might just hyperventilate himself.

Jimmy doesn't let him. Tate feels a hand rub firm on his back when his breath grows uneven, he feels Jimmy's chest rise and fall, purposely steady, until his own can fall back into pace with it. He sniffles, clutches Jimmy tight, and says a silent prayer that he'll always have those strong arms to disappear into, that beating heart to regress on.

Still though, he cries. Because he's read the literature and he knows the facts about Cystic Fibrosis. He knows that Violet's lungs are killing her and that she probably won't live to be thirty; that even if by some miracle she gets new ones, there's no saying her body will accept them. And he's terrified to lose her and scared to live without the only person who has ever truly understood him, but it hurts him even more to see her suffer. And he's heartbroken beyond words at the awful realization that he probably doesn't get to grow old with her.

It isn't fair. He cries and cries and cries, and Jimmy is nothing but patient. He may not understand Tate the way Violet does, but he loves him unconditionally and he'll protect him to the fucking end with such ferocity that it scares him. And very, very few things scare Jimmy Darling.

Tate finally quiets. He isn't done, but feels so dehydrated and weak that he chooses to stop when he can. He shifts, placing his cheek on the far side of Jimmy's chest, away from the big wet spot he created on his tee-shirt.

"You want me to go get you a shake?" Jimmy asks gently.

"Uh huh," Tate mutters, wiping his nose on the side of Jimmy's zip-up sweatshirt.

Given the circumstances, Jimmy doesn't complain. But he pulls away and places a hand on his kid brother's shoulder, smudging the tracks of his tears away with one long, bent hand. "Be right back," he says with a smile. "You sit down. Think, reflect. I dunno, pray."

Tate just waits. Jimmy returns promptly with a strawberry shake for Tate, a coke for himself, and one of those little square, hospital-issue Kleenex boxes. He sets it down next to Tate before handing him his drink. Tate, ever petulant, rolls his eyes.

"You wanna go home?" he asks, sitting down. "You must be exhausted. And cold."

Tate shakes his head firmly. "No," he insists, his bloodshot eyes filling again. "I don't wanna leave her. I'm staying right here."

"Okay," Jimmy soothes, reaching into his bag and pulling out his IPad. "That's totally fine. We can wait right here until morning and then we can go find the doctors or Vi's parents and ask them what's up. Okay?"

Tate sniffles and nods, collapsing sideways against his brother. Jimmy scrolls through the Netflix options, finally settling on the X-Men cartoon that Tate liked in grade school. The reruns used to play Saturday mornings. He grins as the theme music begins, craning his neck to plant a kiss atop his brother's tousled hair.

"I hope Quicksilver is in this one," Tate mumbles, sipping his shake. The cool texture soothes his raw throat. "He's my favorite."

"I know," Jimmy says, stifling a yawn. "I remember. Here..." He wriggles out of his hoodie and places it across Tate's skinny shoulders. Tate shrugs his arms inside of the warm sleeves and sidles up even closer to Jimmy, his head practically in his lap. "You should go," he says. "You're tired."

Jimmy grins, mussing the blond hair in his lap. "Not a chance," he says. "I'm staying right here. I'm always here. Hey, you know that, right?"

"Uh huh," Tate mutters sleepily, his stinging eyelids already growing heavy at his older brother's touch. "I do, Jimmy. I do."


	2. Lobby

**Okay, I couldn't resist making this a real story. In the end, what talked me into it was the guest review from someone who has a loved one with CF. I have to confess that I don't actually know anyone with the disease, but the idea came to me from watching the documentary "65 Red Roses" about Eva Markvoort, a blogger who had and eventually died from CF. I used to read her blog a lot as well and was really moved by all of it. So I'll do my best to get things right! And anon, I too wish you had a big brother like Jimmy. :)**

**Anyway, I usually don't write longer stories in present tense like this, but I guess I'll just go with it. Some facts: Jimmy is less emotional in this story than he is in my other ones. There won't be any supernatural or horror stuff (you can read Baby Mine or Can I Keep You? for that). There also won't be "dark Tate" or any murder stuff, though you probably will see his surly side. I tend to write Tate as kind of a wounded puppy because that's how he struck me on the show. God knows why they are in Philadelphia of all places, except for the fact that I've been there and that's what came to me. My mind is weird. ****Also, Ethel does not have a beard in this AU.**

**And modified characters from all seasons will turn up in odd places. I dunno, this story is really random and weird but I like it. **

**I guess I'll just see where this goes, but I see it focusing a lot on family relationships. There will be some Violate, but if you want a story that's primarily that, you'll probably be disappointed. If you want pure Violate, there are plenty of good stories on this site! :) **

* * *

They finally go home around five the next morning. Violet is stable but can't have non-family visitors yet. Ethel is working the night shift at a different hospital, and their sister Addie, who has special needs of her own, is with her. The Darling brothers unfurl the pull-out couch in the front room, turn on Cartoon Network, and pass out for the next five hours. Neither of them has any real desire to go sleep elsewhere. Not tonight.

It's Jimmy who wakes first. He fixes coffee: black for himself and full of milk and flavored syrup for Tate, the only way he'll take it. Tate is still sitting in bed, lumped under blankets, when Jimmy emerges from the bathroom holding the little straight razor.

"We need to talk," he says.

"What the fuck?" Tate moans, pulling the faded quilt closer around himself, a protective gesture.

Jimmy brandishes the razorblade. "Where the hell did this come from?" he half-yells. "Huh? I thought I threw all these away... Answer me! Who gave you this?"

Tate puts his head in his hands. "Jimmy, can you just not right now?"

"Not right now?" cries Jimmy, indignant. "I stay up all night with you, knock myself out being there for you, and you're gonna tell me 'not right now'? Jesus Christ, Tate! Show me your arm!"

Tate starts to cry again. In general, he's possessed of the same iron-clad control over his tear ducts as any other teenage boy. But now he's tired, and upset, and the waterworks have already been going. Besides, he doesn't care if Jimmy sees him be a weepy mess.

Jimmy softens. "Hey..." he says, sitting down beside his brother and patting his back. "Hey, come on. I'm not mad at you." He sighs, searching for the words. "I just... Home is a safe place, remember? Just like Ma keeps trying to tell you. You can feel things here; you don't have to cut yourself. It's not like school."

Tate looks up at him, his face blotchy and tear-stained. "I don't have to go back there," he whimpers. "...Right?"

He shrugs. "Ma said you could finish out high school at home... Come on now, stop crying; you're gonna get all dehydrated." He sighs. "I'm sorry I yelled at you."

"It's fine," Tate mutters, sniffling. He finally grabs a tissue from that stupid mini-box and blows his nose. "I know I've been kind of a dick lately."

Jimmy smiles sadly and ruffles his brother's hair. "You haven't been a dick," he says quietly. "Anyone would be a wreck in your position. I get it."

Tate's lip starts to quiver again. "Just... just... what if she doesn't get better, Jimmy?" He leans forward and plants his forehead on the older guy's shoulder. "Oh god, what if she dies...?"

"They're gonna get her lungs," Jimmy insists, hugging him. He sounds sure, but inside he feels helpless.

"What if they don't get them in time?" Tate sobs into his brother's sweatshirt, choking on the awful words.

He sighs audibly. He knows the kid is too smart for any consoling lie he might try and tell. "Then you're gonna get through it," he says firmly, "and you're gonna be okay. But I really think that Vi is gonna get lungs, and she's gonna take to them like a fucking duck to water, and you guys are gonna graduate and go on and be really, really happy. Alright? Aw, for the love of God, Tate, stop crying. You're gonna break my goddamn heart here."

The TV in front of them is playing reruns of Courage The Cowardly Dog. Outside, the view from the third-floor apartment's large front window is the backs of other buildings, power lines, the freeway, houses in the distance. Their home is situated right on the outskirts of Philadelphia, a neighborhood full of chain-store sprawl that perfectly exemplifies the exurbs. Jimmy stares out at it and thinks about Tate as a tow-headed toddler, learning to talk. Addie and Beau had been special cases and Jimmy, Ethel's first, had been easy: a sanguine child who rarely cried, took to change happily, and picked himself up quickly whenever he fell. From day one Tate, the youngest, was special: sensitive, sure, but also gentle and creative in a way that Jimmy struggled to be.

What he remembers most, though, is his baby brother's term for him: _My Jimmy._ Never just brother or Jimmy or even James. My Jimmy. From day one, he was claimed.

* * *

_I used to know this boy / who took notes in a book / but he ripped out all the pages before I got a look / At all the words he scribbled / at all the lines he filled / but the ink stains on his fingers told me he was skilled / At capturing a feeling that most of us just miss / the simple pain of living with goodbyes on our lips..._

Her Space Holiday plays softly from the IPod docked on the windowsill. It's been playing Death Cab, Modest Mouse, The Postal Service. Bands that clang and clink and whisper. Violet is wearing a nightshirt covered in caged birds. She smiles at Tate through the tubes in her nose.

"Mass murder," she says dryly. "That's the first thing I'm gonna do when I get lungs. I'm gonna kill fucking everyone. Starting with everyone here."

Tate, cuddled beside her, laughs. He likes that she isn't the model patient, that she never developed the saccharine holiness typical of the chronically ill. Some might see it as negativity, but not him. He gets it. He _loves _it. She's fighting, she's fierce.

"So how does it work again?" he asks, eying the pager clipped her collar.

"I have to keep it with me all the time," she says. "When they have lungs for me, it'll go off."

"So you're on the list now?" Tate asks, excited. He leans over and plants a kiss on the bridge of her nose.

"Yep," she grins. "Officially on the list."

* * *

Out in the lobby Jimmy paces. He feels useless just hanging around, but he's Tate's ride and besides, he needs to be there in case of another meltdown. His fair brows furrow. He's so wrapped up in his own worries, so busy giving himself wrinkles, that he hardly notices the candy until it's shoved into his face.

"Would you like one?" asks the voice attached to the body attached to the hand that appeared out of nowhere. He focuses his eyes to see a young woman about his age, dressed in scrubs. She's tallish and slender, with straight dark hair cut blunt to her shoulders and a narrow, striking face: porcelain skin, full red lips, and big brown eyes. Her name tag reads _Dot Tattler, RN._

Jimmy managed a smile and takes the lollipop, nodding. "I usually hand them out to kids," the nurse says. He notices a Southern drawl and wonders where she's from. "But I thought you looked like you maybe could use one."

"Yeah," he mutters, trying to get his wits about him. "Yeah, thanks..."

"Can I help you find someone?"

"Me? Oh, no. I'm just here waiting for my brother. He's here seeing his girlfriend. Violet Harmon. Room 1124."

"Oh, I love Violet!" Dot exclaims. "She's a breath of fresh air around here, believe me. No pun intended."

Jimmy laughs. He's caught off guard by her humor, but he likes it. He unwraps the sucker and pops it into his mouth.

That's when he feels it. After twenty-four years, he doesn't even need to see it with his eyes anymore; he can always tell the moment when someone notices his hands. But Dot doesn't flinch or grow uncomfortable, trying too hard to look away casually the way most people do. She studies the fused digits with a calm, intent acceptance.

"Wait," she says, moving her gaze to his face, "your brother is that little blond boy I see around here... y'all aren't twins, are you?"

"Me and Tate? No. I mean, he's my brother, but he's seven years younger."

"Of course. Y'all look just alike in the face, but you do look older. I just asked because I happen to be an identical twin myself."

"No shit? Is she a nurse, too?"

"My sister Bette?" she asks with a snort-laugh. "God no. She's a stand-up comedian. Well, slash waitress at Denny's..."

"No way," Jimmy grins. "I'm an actor."

"Really? Have you been in anything I'd have heard of?"

He shakes his head, suddenly embarrassed. "Actor slash barista," he admits. "You know how it goes. I mean, since our dad died I've kind of had family to look out for, and of course I can be kind of tough to cast for..." he trails off, holding up one hand.

Dot nods. "We're all freaks here," she whispers, cracking a smile. "Hold on," she mutters, opening the door to an empty room and beckoning Jimmy inside. "...I'll show you something..."

Once inside, she tugs down the side of her blue scrub pants an inch or two to reveal the top end of a thick red scar. He also catches a glimpse of her underpants, a juvenile cherry-print cotton that's comforting, somehow, on a woman her age. But he chastises himself for looking.

"My sister and I were born conjoined," she says. "Right at the hip. In another era they'd probably have sold us to the freak show."

Jimmy's eyes bug out. "Wow," he mutters, words momentarily failing him. "Well geez... I guess I'd have been right there with you. Hey, we could have traveled together! Part of the same troupe..."

Dot tugs her waistband quickly back into place. "Well anyhow," she says, "I've gotta go do my rounds. But I just wanted you to know that you're _never _alone here, okay? We _are_ part of the same troupe, era be damned."

Her eyes catch his, and it's Jimmy who first looks away. He feels seen in a way he isn't used to, as if she can somehow look past the easy smile and see all the things he hides: How scared he is, how much he really worries, the sense of responsibility that feels like a jumbo jet atop his shoulders. At first it feels intrusive. That vulnerability is his; this stranger has no right to access it without his permission. And yet, another part of him feels such an enormous relief at her knowing gaze that he almost wants to break down and cry.

"Well thanks," he says, flashing a dimpled smile and eying her name badge. "...Dot?"

She smiles. "And I didn't catch your name."

"Jimmy," he says, thinking that maybe hanging around this place isn't so bad. "Jimmy Darling."


	3. Bed

**Sorry for the delay, I was sick!**

* * *

Jimmy doesn't tell anyone the truth. He tells Ma and Addie and Tate that it's an audition, that's he was called to try out for a new part. Later on, when he comes home with his heart in his shoes and angling desperately for a shower, he'll grin ruefully and say that he bombed it. Awful, he'll say; I walked in there and instantly knew I wasn't what they had in mind. Ah, well. Such is the life of an actor, right?

An actor, alright. More of one than they'll ever know.

The women sell makeup, lunch bags, skin care, overpriced dip mixes. This time it's a new one on him: sex toys. At least the services he discreetly advertises on Craigslist are a little more fitting here. He never reveals exactly what's wrong with him-that'd be too identifying, too risky. Just that he has a "secret weapon". Ugh, horrible. That wording, so unlike him, is enough to make him sick.

He hears them from behind the closed bedroom door, giggling over vibrators and lingere. And he is trying to be sexy, with his smile and his posture and his hand, but he feels like Quasimodo. They file in one by one, some pretty and some ugly, some nervous and some downright predatory, to see him. Jimmy swallows, forces a smile, and imagines himself an attraction in an old-timey freak show: _Step right up, _he thinks, _behold the human sex toy. Lobster Boy._

He disassociates, thinks about the why: Violet, so sick and pale in her hospital bed, brave and so unfairly young. Tate's eyes bloodshot from crying, red from tears that only Jimmy sees. Beauregard... no, he thinks. Fuck no. He won't fail again. He won't let another one die. And so, in the moment where he's more wanted than he's ever been, he feels the most like an outcast. In the moment where he's most desired, he feels the ugliest he's ever been.

It's different this time. She whispers in his ear and offers extra, a lot extra, for more. For acts that Jimmy had always associated with love, but hell, he thinks, what hope does a deformed guy have of that anyway? He'll always be popular, he thinks, but he'll never be handsome. He'll always be lovable, but he'll never be loved. He agrees, on the condition that they use protection.

He'll want to cry afterward but feel like it isn't his right: not even to Ma, not even to Tate. Not even alone in the shower where no one can see him. He pulls the bedsheets back and tries to pretend he's in a movie, that he's the leading man he never can be. He does his best to be kind, to be gentle.

Later on at home he'll log on, waiting a few hours so that it isn't obvious. He'll go to the bookmarked Go Fund Me page that Tate has set up for Violet's in-home care and click "anonymous donation".

* * *

Violet's hospital wall looks quietly like an underused Instagram page. She idly snaps lomography photos of the city, the sunset, the life from her window. Tate gives her pictures, too-photos of the two of them and drawings of birds. Taped at the center is her favorite poem: T.S. Eliot's Prelude #3.

_You tossed a blanket from the bed,_ _you lay upon your back, and waited..._

The girl down the hall is a minor Internet celebrity, a blogger who's loving towards others and cheerful about her disease in a way that Violet can't manage. She saw the girl's wall once, an explosion of crayon and photo, of color and light. And she hated herself quietly, thinking of her meager little grid of love.

This morning, though, the focus is on her. Her parents, Vivien and Ben, hover around her bedside along with the two main doctors on her case. Dr. Arden is a tall, gaunt man in his sixties or seventies with a bald head and a bad bedside manner. Dr. Thredson, also tall, is a dark-haired man in his thirties, possessed of a subtle kind of oddball vibe. It's as if he might have been a serial killer in another life, or maybe has bodies stashed in the hospital basement. Even the head of the hospital is there, an eerily baby-faced guy who Violet swears can't be more than thirty. She hasn't seen him before.

It's Jimmy who runs into him when he slips out into the hall. "Excuse me?" he says, eying the shiny name-tag attached to the man's crisp white shirt. "Mr... Mott?"

"Yes?"

"Is she... she's leaving, right? Going home?"

He sighs. "Against better judgment, in my opinion, but yes. Her physicians have arranged for her family to _attempt _home care."

Jimmy studies his unlined face. He's known professionally as Daniel, and Jimmy can't know that his family still calls him by his childhood nickname: Dandy. He looks impatient and furthermore, bored.

"Hey, you've gotta tell me," Jimmy says, his voice low. "What exactly is the... the prognosis here?"

"Are you family?"

"Yes," Jimmy lies.

"You realize I myself am not a physician..."

"Okay..."

Dandy takes a step forward, as if he's done with the conversation before it's formally ended. He glances down at Jimmy's visitor's badge. "To be completely honest, Mr. Darling, that depends on whether or not she gets a transplant. Though frankly, it's never a good sign when a CF patients needs one this young."

Jimmy squints. "How'd you get this gig so young, anyway?"

Dandy looks taken aback. "Nepotism works wonders," he finally says coldly, with just a hint of humor in his voice. "Excuse me."

He's gone before Jimmy can say any more. Jimmy reaches for the door to Violet's room but realizes that he can't bring himself to go in. He suddenly wishes dearly that Dandy would come back. The guy's cold as Antarctica, which he suddenly finds soothing. He just can't take any more, right now, of other people's emotions.

He goes to the chapel. Again it's deserted, but there are no cartoons now, no milkshakes, no Tate. Jimmy sits down slowly and sighs, putting his face in his hands. All he can think in his head are curse words. That's all his heart will allow.

Then he feels a hand on his shoulder. It's a light hand; cold, feminine, thin. He looks up to see Dot, her sad smile like an angel's.


	4. Morgue

"You okay?" Dot asks.

All that comes out of Jimmy is a frustrated groan. He rubs at his temples, wishing he could disappear.

She smiles. "Us nurses, we come in here, too. Not necessarily to pray. Well, some do I'm sure. I don't. I just... the peace in here. The quiet. I need that sometimes." She squeezes his hand, completely unphased by its oddness. "I have bad days, too."

Jimmy forces a laugh. "Yeah, well, could I ask that you please don't cry or anything right now?" He's attempting to be jovial, to laugh it off, but his voice betrays him by coming out desperate and broken. "...Cause I swear to God, if I have to see one more person crying or upset right now I'm just gonna lose it... I mean it, Dot, I'm gonna jump off a goddamn bridge..."

"Well don't do _that. _Geez, then I really will cry." She looks, noticing the tears in Jimmy's eyes. "Hey, it's okay... in my line of work we see tears all the time. Professional shoulders to cry on, we are..."

"I'm fine," Jimmy insists with a dismissive hand wave. He sniffs and rubs his nose with one sleeve, blinking away the uncharacteristic upwelling of emotion inside of him. _Jesus, _he thinks, _I must be even more tired and stressed out than I realized..._

"Just tired," he says. "Hungry, you know?" He laughs. "You don't wanna see me hungry. It's bad."

Dot's eyes light up. He notices for the first time just how pretty she is, her skin and eyes like a porcelain doll and her lips somehow sultry, like an old-time starlet. In her dot-and-strawberry-print scrubs, her straight hair pulled back with a gummy headband, she's the picture of unassuming beauty. Just his type... or is she? Jimmy's never really thought about his type, he realizes. Just about who might possibly have him.

"I'll buy you breakfast," she says. "Come on. I'm off for the next hour, we can go to the Denny's across the way. You look like someone who needs a good cheering up."

* * *

Tate and Violet are making mischief among the vast corridors of the domain of the dying. They hide behind empty gurneys and big wheelie bins full of towels. They stick paper mustaches on pictures of administrators and silly word-balloons on old black-and-white photos of nuns. Now and then _Twinkle Twinkle _chimes over the loudspeaker, announcing babies.

Tate wants nothing more than to take her out into the sunlight, to walk her through the hospital's brick-paved garden and pluck her flowers from the trees. He wants to see the sunlight dapple her hair, alight her skin, but she insists on the basement instead. The morgue.

They can't actually access it. Violet is breathless and they collapse amongst the boilers, against a heap of clean white laundry, and stare at the door. One ear-bud each, they listen to The Antlers' _Hospice _on her Ipod.

_In the middle of the night I was sleeping sitting up / when a doctor came to tell me "enough is enough" / He brought me out into the hall, I could have sworn it was haunted / and told me something that I didn't know that I wanted to hear..._

The singer's tinny voice annoys Tate, and he doesn't understand her choice in music. He looks sideways at her, dressed in her own clothes for once but they are sloppy, black leggings and a long striped sweater and fluffy pink socks. "You're really not scared," he says quietly. "Are you?"

"I'm not scared of anything."

Tate stares, tender, right through the facade. "I know that's not true."

Violet shrugs. "When you're sick you have two choices, you know? Become a saint or develop an attraction to the darkness. So I did. You have to get used to the idea of yourself in there on that slab." Her voice is flat but he can see her eyes grow glassy, deep dark like basement swimming pools. Tate imagines embalming fluid in tubs. "I've imagined me, you know," she says, her voice little. "I've forced myself. I've imagined the cold in there, how dark it must be." Her voice breaks. "How I can't really take anyone with me..."

Tate brushes away the tear that falls down her cheek, tapping into the weird intensity he gets when a big idea hits him. It's the same intensity that scares so many people off, that made kids whisper that he'd probably end up shooting the school up. "I will _never _let you die alone," he says, knowing suddenly exactly what he wants-what he _has_-to do. "Okay? Hey. Close your eyes and remember that everything is going to be okay. I love you."

They kiss. It's ended abruptly when the morgue door swings open, revealing to the sitting children: shiny leather shoes. Tate looks up the long legs in their tapered black, the broad chest with the plaid tie flat down it, and up up (he looks so tall suddenly) into Dandy's face. Their eyes meet, light on dark, in an uncomfortable jolt; psycho twins, two kindred spirits from different eras in other realities.

Tate is about to start shaking, but the man switches his cold gaze to the girl. "Violet..."

She waits, the breath that genetic illness mostly stole from her held baited, for trouble. But he smiles, and it's a both jarring and terribly glorious the way his whole dead face lights up, his skin tone warming and his eyes aging backwards. "...You're supposed to be heading home or with family, little one. Not down here with the dead."

His tone is friendly; teasing, even. She lets her meager breath escape. "I'm not in trouble?"

Dandy clasps his long hands behind his back. "Not this time. Go on."

She gets up to go, pulling her speechless boyfriend up along with her. "...Mr. Mott...?"

"Yes?"

"...What were you doing in the morgue?"

He smiles again, the slight crinkle it creates around his eyes the only lines in his young face. "We all have our... peculiarities, don't we, Violet? We're all freaks, so to speak; we're all strange."

Enough privilege and enough money free one to be as peculiar as they damn well please, even in situations where the less deeply affluent would feel inclined to be professional. Unsettled and consoled, Violet and Tate reach for each other's hands and head upstairs now, out into the sunlight.

* * *

At Denny's, Jimmy and Dot are served by a blonde, coiffed version of Dot who acts nothing like her. It's downright eerie, Jimmy thinks, to hear such a different personality come out of the carbon-copy of somebody's face. Twins are weird.

Bette, in her short black skirt and her work-issue vest and her sensible waitressing shoes, takes their order and shoots her sister a look that tells Dot she'll be getting the third-degree about this young man the next time they're alone together. She sighs. Jimmy sips his coffee and smiles-God, that's an unfamiliar feeling. He wonders whether he likes Dot, whether he maybe could love her. Then he remembers: who he is, what he does. All his dirty, sickening secrets.

Their breakfast plates come and they eat for a while in silence. Jimmy has, of course, perfected holding forks and cutting meat and feeding himself with his fused hands, but he feels self-conscious anyway. He puts his fork down and squints at her, the sun through the window playing across his face.

"How do you do it?" he asks her. "Day in and day out... Seeing all that death and all that suffering, and hell, even the good stuff... just all that... _emotion... _all day every day. I'd go crazy."

Dot shrugs, looking out across the freeway. "There's a myth," she says slowly, "That nurses are all touchy-feely types. I find that the best of us aren't. Me personally, my mama used to call me 'The Brick Wall'. That's how I withstand it, I guess. I depersonalize. Not so much that I don't care-that's a pitfall, too, one you have to avoid-but enough not to hurt. If you're in the bathroom crying every time someone's sick or sad or dying, well... that's selfish more than anything. These people and their families don't need soup to fall into, Jimmy, they need a rock."

A rock. Jimmy knows that role all too well. He imagines for a moment playing it like she does, for an ever-revolving cast of strangers instead of just family. The mere thought makes his head hurt.

"I guess I'm not much of an emotional type myself, either," he admits. "Neither is my ma, and my sister is happy-go-lucky more than anything. Tate's the crier in the family, poor kid. It probably would have fared better on Addie..."

"But he makes you tender," Dot says, bearing into him again with that uncomfortable, intent gaze. "He keeps you human. That's a gift. And that's my gift, too, from my job."

Jimmy feels his face flush, not sure whether he's embarrassed or love-struck or about to start bawling. "Yeah," he laughs, wiping his mouth needlessly with his napkin, "I mean, sure, I guess so, yeah..."

"Listen, Jimmy," Dot cuts in, placing a hand on the table. "Would you ever want to... have a drink or something? Maybe go out sometime, have dinner..."

He's caught off guard and his heart breaks. Shame is all he feels, slippery and burning. For too long for comfort he's silent. "Listen, Dot," he says after clearing his throat. "You're beautiful... and so cool, really so cool. But I... I have shit going on you don't know about. Shit you don't want to get mixed up in, believe me."

Dot makes a thin line of her mouth, avoiding his eyes. "Of course," she says quietly. "I shouldn't have asked, it was unprofessional... Listen, I'm gonna go pay. My break is about over."

She stands and heads for the register, leaving Jimmy to sigh over general self-loathing and half-eaten eggs.


	5. Spare Room

**I hit a bit of writer's block with this (and have been crazy busy) but damn if I haven't broken free! Thanks to DinahRay for some good ideas and to everyone who enjoys this tale.**

**Also, Dandy saying the word "hipster" is everything. All of it. I die.**

* * *

Dandy Mott, so used to fried brie on toast and expensive bread baskets and in-season fruit, is picking idly at dry, tough steak and an omelette that probably came from a carton. He stares out the window at the gray, the drizzle, the freeway. He is at peace.

"Everything okay here?" Bette asks, filling his coffee cup when he pushes it forward.

"Wonderful," he says, in a tone that isn't sarcastic but just rather flat. "I could stay here all day..."

And he _has _been there a while. The waitress glances down at the book to his left on the table: _Eeeee Eee Eeee _by Tao Lin.

"My sister is more depressed than you," she says slyly.

"Excuse me?"

"Your book. That's a recurring line. I love him."

Dandy squints. "You don't think he's too... hipster?"

"That's the _joy _of it!" she says, her accent touching something uncomfortably deep inside of him-a favorite nanny, was it? Is that who it reminds him of? "All this real darkness, this quiet sadness, this pretty stuff... buried in the obnoxious irreverence of it all. It's delightful."

He looks up, finally, smiling. He doesn't make much eye contact, generally, so when he does he's shocked to finally see the spitting imagine of one of the nurses he manages.

He's slack-jawed for a moment, dazed. Finally he sputters: "I'm sorry. You _must _have a twin..."

"Oh, Dot? Nah, they cloned me. I was just that productive and impressive, working for tips at twenty-six... You work over there at at hospital, I take it? You're not in scrubs... no, you couldn't be a doctor. You don't look old enough."

"Oh, no," he says quickly. "No, I'm... more on the... clerical side of things." Dandy fingers his fork and turns back to his window.

"Oh, so like data entry or billing, that sort of thing?"

"Yes," he mutters. "Yeah." He's quiet for another long stretch and then reaches to touch his book-almost tenderly. "I hadn't met anyone else who had read it..."

Bette arches one perfect eyebrow. "Perhaps we should form a book club of two."

He feels his face flush. He's no stranger to being flirted with by women, but while it's generally tiresome, this is... provocative. Utterly. Something about the way she speaks sparks a thirst in his soul. Like they speak the same foreign language.

"I'd like that very much," he says, with a small, glancing smile that comes off as cute.

Her voice drops to a whisper. "Wait around here for about fifteen more minutes."

And then, in a blur of blonde and black work shoes and uniform flair, she's gone. Dandy is left grinning down at his clasped hands and trying hard to push down the nagging branch of doubt. Still, though, it prevails, pushing up from his middle, the muddied pit of his stomach, and creeping, gnarled and wooden, towards his throat. Girls are attracted to two things about him and two things only: his looks and his bank account. Once they find out about his most peculiar pet hobby they run. It marks him as sick, defective, ill-fitting.

Still, though, it's nice to get to pretend to be someone else for a hot minute.

* * *

The second-floor spare room is the biggest in the apartment, lined wall to far-off wall in faded, dusty mint green carpeting that your feet and your ass just sink into; rosy with powdery, elderly upholstery shampoo that rises in noticeable clouds to make you periodically sneeze. The paint on the walls is a dull, matte lavender, lined halfway up with a wallpaper border of ornate tulips, green and purple, on a black background. Those walls are lined with bookshelves, high intimidating oak, which overflow with cookbooks and board games and outdated video game systems, old stacks of magazines and long-forgotten knick-knacks, dusty dry fishbowls. The furthest wall, by the heavy-curtained window, is plain wood paneling, with an outdated radiator humming next to a large tank full of live turtles.

The remaining Darling brothers sit in the middle of the floor across from one another, each holding gingerly to an edge of the plastic planchette. Tate is wearing plaid PJ bottoms and Addie's old high school choir tee-shirt and Jimmy's hair is still damp from the shower, his funny striped socks contrasting sharply with his black jeans and tee shirt. He smells of shampoo and laundry detergent.

The ouija board spells out nonsense words with two many consonants, scooting to "yes" only when Tate asks if he should give Violet the promise ring he bought her on Homecoming night.

Jimmy rolls his eyes good-naturedly. "You're moving it."

"Fuck you," faux-gasps Tate. "I am not."

"Okay," Jimmy hums, raising his brows, "Oh mighty oracle... did Tate ruin the radiator over there with those stupid Mickey Mouse stickers..."

"That was Addie!"

"...did he used to be afraid of Timmy The Tooth..."

"Oh, fuck off, Jimmy, seriously..."

"...Is he a complete dork-face who will never, _ever _beat me at ping-pong, or WoW for that matter?"

Tate is about to throw the planchette at his brother's head when Ethel opens the door and stares sternly at the two boy who are the spitting image of her late husband. That Darling face, she thinks. Those are some strong genetics right there.

Jimmy chuckles. "Hey Ma."

She doesn't crack a smile. "I really wish you boys would throw that thing out," she says. "I don't like it in the house, it's a bad omen. Asking for trouble."

Tate looks petulant. "But what if someone really tries to come through?"

Ethel laughs derisively. "Oh boy, what if! That's exactly what I want!"

"...What if it's Beau?"

The trio is silent for a long moment, not daring to look at one another. Finally Addie saves the day by creeping up behind her mother, dressed in her long Snoopy nightgown. Her eyes light up. "I wanna play!"

"_No,_ Miss Adelaide," barks Ethel, "Now go. to. bed."

"Tate and Jimmy aren't in bed!"

"Well, Tate's about to go and Jimmy is twenty-four; he can stay up as late as he wants to."

"I'm nineteen!"

Sensing that a meltdown in imminent, Jimmy begins to stand and go to his sister, but Tate surprises him by beating him to it. "Come on, Addie," he says, steering her gently from the room. "I'll read you _Wocket In My Pocket_ before bed." His voice drops. "We can play with the board tomorrow, okay?"

Once they're gone Jimmy looks up at his mother with uneasy eyes, sensing on son's intuition alone that she's got more on her mind than mystic oracles from Parker Brothers. Slowly she shuts the door behind her and sits down next to him.

"Those are some awful generous donations you've been giving Violet's home-care fund," she says. He's avoiding her eyes. "You left the desktop browser open."

Jimmy just nods, feeling his stomach clench.

"I know they're not paying you all that down at the coffee shop," Ethel says. "There's no way you could be giving all that and still have money for food and gas. Not on what you make."

Jimmy shrugs. "I got a paid acting gig."

"Don't gimme that," Ethel chides. "There's no way on God's Earth you wouldn't have told me about a paid acting gig the second you got it."

"I guess I forgot."

"Oh yeah? And what is the name of this famous project, pray tell? When can we all go see it?"

"Jesus, Ma!" Jimmy cries, turning away from her and pushing his hands up into his hair. "I was just trying to help, okay?!"

Ethel softens. "I know, Jimmy," she says, putting a hand on his shoulder. "And I know my oldest son well enough to know that whatever it is probably harms you a hell of a lot more than it does anyone else involved in it. Always the hero. The martyr, though you never cared for the glory..."

Jimmy starts crying in spite of himself. He's not one for displaying emotion, even around family, but goddamn if Ma isn't the one person who can reduce him in an instant. Obnoxious.

"I did what I had to do to make things better," he chokes out, blinking tears. "I dunno why you've gotta attack me for it..."

She just waits. He has an awful feeling, though, that she knows already. Somehow.

He laughs wetly, looking sidelong at her. "What, no Kleenex up your sleeve?" he asks weakly, referring to a habit she had when they were all little. When she's silent still he gets up and gets several for himself from the dusty wicker box on the radiator, wiping his nose for the main sake of buying himself some time before he has to make eye contact. When he sits again he plays nervously with the wad of tissue in his hand, balling it up and then smoothing it back out again. Tears drip into his lap. "The things I've done, Ma..." he whimpers.

"The things you've done," she repeats, "that you won't tell me."

"I sold my body," he eeks out, and he's sobbing now, ashamed.

The hurt carefully concealed in her voice is punishment enough. "Oh, Jimmy..."

"But I had to," he sobs into his hands. "It's the one thing I've got, the one reason I might get chosen over somebody else..." And a million subtexts are clear in those words. That he's young and good-looking and a freak and while he might not have the education or the expertise to make money any other way, his body is a sure bet. But the spiritual cost is clear now in his tears.

"Come here," she says flatly, imploring Jimmy to lean into her fleshy arms and rest his face in the shoulder of her quilted flannel bathrobe. He can see his own stupid feelings making wet spots all over it; he can hear himself sniffling.

"You are _so _much more than that," she insists while he cries. "So much more than your hands or your face or your smile..." She stops, and for a split second her voice is husky, too, choked up: "You're my little boy. My first one. So tough and smart and idealistic. Talented. Brave."

"I'm so sorry, Ma..." he sobs-and he _is _sobbing, sobbing awfully, and all the more so because he's forcing himself to be quiet about it. "I'm so, so sorry..."

"Shh... You got no one to be sorry towards but yourself."

On the far wall the radiator turns on with a dated mechanical whine, forcing stifling warm air from its old metal vents. From across the long hallway Tate's voice carries, reading to Addie about Bofas on sofas and Zillows on pillows. Surrounded by that warm familiarity, that uncomfortable heat that is family, Jimmy lets himself be broken for a moment. Just this once.


End file.
